It was the first full quarter since co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO.

Page delivered the impressive results even while standing by his vow to bring in more engineering talent and investing heavily in more data centres so that Google can keep expanding into new fields to make even more money in the future.

Google's newest venture, a Facebook-like social network called Plus, debuted two weeks ago and has grown quickly amid positive reviews.

Google added 2,452 employees in the second quarter, including 450 workers inherited as part of the company's $700 million purchase of airline fare tracker ITA Software.

Google has been facing stiff competition in online advertising threats from rivals Facebook and Groupon and an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether it has used its dominance in the search market to limit competition.